January 25, 2005
My Obligatory Global Warming Myth Busting Post
Yikes, Bill goes wildly off course in his update here. Not a big deal. He gets a whole heap of facts wrong but, I'm just not in the mood to even read the whole thing much less reply. So be it. One of the things he gets wrong is that he says I was going to make a global warming post... I offered to if he wanted, I never said I was going to... but what the heck...
Lemme do this in as few words as possible.
Proving that the global warming crowd is wrong is, by definition, impossible without the benefit of decades. Proving a negative always works out that way. But we can look at the theory critically and determine if it is even credible. As soon as I post this, 100 believers will try to play semantical word games... Especially since I'm doing this (again) in as few words as possible, I'm sure someone will have a problem with the way I say something. I challenge them to skip the word games and stick to the larger points.
While it can be expanded for days, the basic "global warming we're all going to die" theory goes like this: We release nasty things like CFCs and CO2 in to the atmosphere. This causes a hole in the ozone layer (and/or acts as a thermal blanket) allowing more radiant energy from the sun to hit the earth causing the earth to warm... which in turn causes any number of scenarios, all of which end with, "and we're all going to die." (nobody said I couldn't have fun with this post.) [yes I know I greatly simplified that-- deal -Ed]
The "evidence," such that it is, can be lumped into 2 broad categories.
1) We are getting warmer than we were a few years decades ago so it is already happening and
2) We can measure the hole in (or the thinning of) the ozone layer and that proves the theory is true.
Additionally, it is ASSUMED that these 2 phenomena are caused by humans. We can't even prove the first 2 much less that we caused it. Let's look at each:
#1) Depending on who you talk to, the earth is about 4.5 BILLION years old. We have reliable temperature data from about the last 200 years. The "believers" routinely compare the temperature today with the temperature just a few decades ago. That is just silly. Even using all 200 years of data we are looking at the last 1/22,500,000th of the history of the planet.
To put that in terms you can wrap your mind around, we just had about 120 million people vote in the last election. Imagine Gallup releasing a poll where they sampled 5 registered voters, all in the same city and called it scientific. They would be laughed at because the sample size was so small.
Yet the environmental crowd expects us to consider the last 20 years of temperature readings important on a planet 4.5 BILLION years old. 20 years would be (statistically) the same as asking 1/2 of 1 person how they were going to vote and from that, predicting a winner.
THEN toss into the mix we know the temperature of the planet has swung wildly thru history and it quickly becomes obvious the people citing this data have a screw lose.
But I'm a generous guy.... I'll give them the point. [Are you out of your mind? Trust me. -ed]
Let's pretend we really can tell something from the fact the average temp raised 0.8 degrees in the last 200 years. AND I'll be even more generous and give them that man did it.... OK, Why did it happen?
Which is more plausible:
The established theory: CFC's (et al) don't destroy ozone at seal level, (or we would not have smog) they magically hold there electron stripping potential till they get to a higher altitude where they strip electrons off ozone and blah blah blah blah blah (there are tons of holes in the theory but I won't even bother poke holes in it now)
Paul's Theory: You know, if we are getting hotter for the last 200 years, it might have something to do with this little thing called "heaters." You know, those things we use to warm us up. Those of you in the Boston area might be familiar with them. To see the effects of man made heat generation, just watch the evening news during the winter. They give one temp in the city and one for the surrounding area which is generally 4 or 5 degrees cooler. Where do you think all that heat goes?
Hundreds of years of us producing heat to keep ourselves warm and produce steam for electricity is far more likely to be the cause of any warming that the nonsense the environmentalists are touting. If we can change the temperature locally by as many of 5 degrees, it is too much to believe that over hundreds of years we can move the average 0.8 degrees? (assuming man is moving the climate which is doubtful)
The environmentalist love to point out that sparsely populated nations have not had as large a temperature increase. DUH! They don't have as many heaters, hot engines, electric generating plants etc etc.
So what have we learned?
First, the data that we have is worthless because the dataset is too small and second, EVEN IF you hold stock in the data, there is a FAR more plausible explanation than the one the environmental community is spreading.
Which brings us to #2.
I so eviscerated #1, I really don't even want to bother with #2. (I'm beat) But I will add this to the mix briefly and expand later if needed.
#2) Much of the ozone data suffers form the same incompleteness as the temperature data, (or worse) we've only measured it for about 20 years. But there is more to be said:
The theory goes that we are "depleting" the ozone layer. I love when people tell me this, I ask them how much ozone we have now and how much we need. It is a great way to make people realize they are arguing from complete ignorance. I literally had a girl one time tell me she thought there was a fixed amount of ozone up there and when we depleted it, we all fried. I disabused her.
Ozone is produced by lighting -- that's what replenished the ozone layer naturally. The theory holds that as the globe warms we get more freak storms. hmmmm More storms means... (say it with me....) more lighting!
So even if we have all these freak storms they will produce more ozone, keeping it in check! Ain't the earth cool?